Learning and Leading

BUYER’Sguide

Educators have always benefited from knowing how much their students understand a subject, how much they’ve learned after a lesson, and how they are progressing. Student response systems make real-time formative and summative assessments easy. Teachers can track student progress by asking questions before, during, and after instruction. Response systems can immediately tally and analyze answers to help teachers adapt lessons, remediate, provide individualized instruction, and keep records.

At a minimum, response systems include a set of handheld remote “clickers” and software for creating questions, gathering answers, and analyzing results. All of the systems listed here support yes/no, true/false, numeric responses, and multiple-choice questions. Several clickers allow students to type in short answers using a keypad or QWERTY keyboard. The most sophisticated handsets have LCD screens and programmable buttons.

It is possible to view responses on a computer screen, electronic whiteboard, or projector as students post them. Systems display answers in a variety of ways, including an assortment of color-coded graphs.

Features for students include
instant feedback and the option
to change an answer within a set
amount of time. Teachers can
choose to display results as students
respond or hide them from view
until all students have answered.
Systems can show how quickly a
student responds, track perfor-
mance over time, and generate in-
dividualized plans of instruction.